The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: oldtoyota on May 31, 2013, 08:45:45 PM
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We spent about $531 this month for a family of three with a cat. Yow!
Granted, about $110 of that was purchased today and will take us into the first week of June.
Also, I only ate out one time this month. Others in the family spent about $20 on eating out. So, the majority of our eating came out of this $531.
This seems high to me. I thought we'd come in under $400 this month and we did not.
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Sigh. I can't seem to get below $450 on average for the two of us & I consider myself a pretty good shopper, so I don't know what to tell you.
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We don't eat out much (maybe $25/mo) and spend on average $160/week for 2 adults, 2 kids and a dog. We pack lunches and I cook all meals. I could get this down if I were willing to not buy organic produce and grass fed beef. But I tried that and the trade off wasn't worth it. I'd rather go without cable, which we cut.
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about $300 a month just for myself. That includes ~$50 on alcohol and $100 on restaurants. Actual groceries more like $150.
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We came in around $360 this month for two people. I'd like to get this lower, but we usually end up having meat with most of our meals and haven't yet found the motivation to cut back.
The key thing we're currently working on is planning meals to always have leftovers for lunch the next day - from that perspective this month was awesome. I only went out to eat once, and that was to scope out a restaurant for our rehearsal dinner. Normally I go out for lunch 2-3 times a week ($5-7/day), so that was a major win.
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We are hovering around $450 a month for 2 adults and one 3 year old. We are eating mostly paleo, so a lot of meat and produce, some of which is organic but not all. I've been trying to cut it back, and have cracked down on wasting food (giving the 3 year old a full plate and dumping 3/4 in the trash, not eating produce before it goes bad, etc.). We have grand plans of a garden here soon, we'll see how that goes. Good luck, its tough!
(Edited to add a side note)
The end of last month I was able to stock up on meat (frozen chicken breast, ground turkey, shrimp) and tons of produce, most of which was organic, from Costco for about $200. That has lasted us almost 2 weeks, and we still have half the meat left. I think this is going to be my goal to hit $400 for the month for groceries. I'm going to leave the goal at $450 though. I keep missing my budget numbers and getting discouraged. I think the mind game of coming in under will be good for me, and then I can set the new expectation accordingly.
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$230 for me and my boyfriend, includes household/cleaning stuff. May was $197 on account of being out of town for awhile.
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I seem to average 5-600 for a couple. This month was 700 wooo
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Mine is ~$30/week, subsidised with some gardening, hunting and climbing into dumpsters (ridiculous amounts of good food) - I don't spend money on much except staples and spices - sometimes interesting stuff on the reduced to clear shelf.
This is a pretty generous budget considering how much I don't pay money for.
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gardening, hunting and climbing into dumpsters (ridiculous amounts of good food)
You aren't joking, eh? I get this vision of half-eaten chicken legs, but obviously that's not what you meant. Can you explain this one? I'm trying to expand my vision here.
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About $300, including household items like paper products, some (not all) organic produce, cat food / litter, excluding alcohol, for two adults + one cat.
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In May, my total was just under $500 for 1 adult, 3 teenagers that live here, and a 9 year old. There are two more teenagers here every weekend. It's pretty good considering the # of people and all the teens but one are boys and eat a staggering amount of food, but it's not as good as I thought it'd be, given all the planning I've been doing to get this number lower. Proportionally, our biggest expense is milk: I want the kids to drink milk if they want to of course, but we go through a gallon every day. Anyone have any ideas on this? I'm thinking maybe try making a batch of instant milk from powder, and mixing it half-and-half with fresh milk. Has anyone done this?
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Our grocery budget for 2 adults is about $300. If we include the dog and the 2 cats... More like $425. (Yikes, I know.)
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We're probably around $400ish for a family of three but I've never tracked. The reason is that in Japan we go to the supermarket, butcher or fish market every day or two and buy whatever we want to have that night. Half of them don't give dockets. We're very good about eating everything we buy and never buy ready made stuff so I'm happy with where we're at. My home alcohol spend is a couple of cheap bottles of wine a month, if that.
Eating out can be high here, the social and working fabric in Japan is about meeting at a public location - I'm pretty sure we offset that by being frugal else where and all the receipts are run through one of our company's as entertainment anyway.
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Am currently challenging myself on this one. Four weeks ago today I spent $215 on a large grocery excursion and am currently seeing how long I can make it last before my next big excursion. There will be a few little ones in there for fresh produce and eggs, etc. As of now there's probably 2 months worth of food in the freezer portioned up, more things that I can cook and make into meals, and still have tons of dried beans and pasta options. Would have no problem making this last another 4 months just getting fresh items every other week or so. Will post again when another big trip is expected. I put the date and amount on my phone calendar and will add monies spent when fresh items are purchased. Will come back with a monthly average at that time.
I am in a one person household.
(am also doing the same for a tank of gas in my car... my type of cheap thrill :) )
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Oi! The grocery bill is my nemesis.
We moved in late April, so started May with an empty pantry/fridge/freezer and spent $1035 for 2 adults and 4 children. We eat all meals at home or pack lunches. So, this number included every scrap of food for 6 people.
My son has a wheat allergy and I buy him a few loaves of expensive gluten free bread.
I also include things like TP and laundry detergent, because I don't have the patience to itemize every receipt.
We shop almost exclusively at Winco which is a great resource for bulk goods. We do have a Costco, but it is a 30 minute drive where Winco is within biking distance.
I don't know how to get it much lower. We all ready eat a lot of rice and beans, some meat, lots of produce and I shop very carefully. With a wheat allergy in the house, I buy no prepackaged crackers or snacks. My issue is simply one of scale. Six people eat a LOT of food.
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~$150 for one small, female adult. That includes lunches.
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The grocery category is my least-well accounted for category. It includes food, toiletries, household & pet items, as well as every other purchase that isn't a set bill (*blush*). I try to shoot for $300, but it usually creeps closer to $400. And I suspect the food is not the problem.
This month, I've made it my goal to actually track specifically where the money is going (X amount on food groceries, Y amount on toilet paper, Z amount on cat food, etc). I went to Costco Wednesday (but I'm counting it against June, because 1) there were some bigger household items in the purchase that I wanted to start tracking immediately, and 2) I WOULD have gone today or tomorrow but I have other obligations.)
Anyway, looking over my receipt yesterday, I saw they had accidentally double-charged me for a 25lb bag of rice! I NEVER would have noticed if I hadn't been totaling up the food vs. household vs. pet amounts. I just went back and they gave me a refund, no questions, so that was good. (Next time, I'll actually look at the receipt in-store.)
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I am willing to admit here that mine was $900 budget until last month, wherein I finally got a Costco membership and am thinking more deliberately about which store I'm shopping at for which item(s)--Trader Joe's excels in a totally different way than Costco. This was in addition to major year-round gardening/canning and prior bulk meat/deep freeze purchases. I have a family of 4 (preschool, so hardly an excuse). We do eat local and organic as much as possible. Milk/dairy/honey etc are from a local farm. That said, I still am embarrassed to say I spent that much. I wish Mint somehow itemized my grocery receipts for me!
I'm now aiming for $400, but I will be quite pleased to hit $450 as an average. Thanks for this thread--I feel like typing this out will help me hold myself accountable to working toward attaining that goal.
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The grocery category is my least-well accounted for category. It includes food, toiletries, household & pet items, as well as every other purchase that isn't a set bill (*blush*). I try to shoot for $300, but it usually creeps closer to $400. And I suspect the food is not the problem.
WOW 300/400 a month is pretty good for that.
Lol! I actually just spent an hour trying to figure it out but gave up on figuring which dollar was for what. Not very mustashian of me I know.
I think its between $600-800 AUD monthly! Including weird miscellaneous items like cat food...
wow for 2 people and a cat. wow maybe I need to submit a case study of shame. =P Just compared to some of the numbers on here (although I realise there is different PP)
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Anyway, looking over my receipt yesterday, I saw they had accidentally double-charged me for a 25lb bag of rice! I NEVER would have noticed if I hadn't been totaling up the food vs. household vs. pet amounts. I just went back and they gave me a refund, no questions, so that was good. (Next time, I'll actually look at the receipt in-store.)
I've never had that happen :-O. But it's pretty common to be charged for red peppers or jalapenos, etc. when buying green bell peppers. Charged for different kinds of apples (when you're specifically buying the ones on sale. It's not as big of a difference, but being $1 off on every purchase at the store can add up.
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I average $125 a month. Sometimes $75, sometimes $150 (if I'm buying some bulk stuff at Costco.) For just me:)
*edited to add that this includes most household items. IE: TP, cleaning products. A case of costco TP last six months, a case of Vinegar and a bag of baking soda from Costco are my cleaning products for the most part.
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May was $620 for 2 adults, and our 2-year average spending is about $570. This includes things like toilet paper and detergent, and food/litter for our cat. We eat mostly fruit, vegetables, pasta, rice, and meat. We shop around and wait for sale days.
Starting now I'm itemizing all our grocery receipts to figure out exactly where all this money is going, since it's easily 50% higher than most of you.
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Food only = $500 a month (converted to US dollars). For two adults a toddler and a baby.
Toiletries included = $650 a month.
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$230 for me and my boyfriend, includes household/cleaning stuff. May was $197 on account of being out of town for awhile.
How do you do that?
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I should have asked people to count or not count non-food supplies bought at the grocery. For me, my grocery bill represents mostly food with the odd tube of suntan lotion or toothpaste thrown in from time to time.
We make our own cleaning supplies from vinegar and water and supplement once in a great while with store bought supplies.
Bottom line: My bill mostly includes food. We're reducing paper towel usage, so maybe that will help. We used to use a lot.
Also, I reduced my wine consumption so maybe that will help too.
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My Wife and I have ALWAYS kept it under 200$ a month for the last 2 years. Now that the kid has arrived however the formula is pushing that to probably about a 250$ average for the 3 of us. This is all things consumable with the exception of eating out. We probably average about 30$ a month eating out. We often buy things in bulk and try to get creative so as to never waste anything.
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I'm now aiming for $400, but I will be quite pleased to hit $450 as an average. Thanks for this thread--I feel like typing this out will help me hold myself accountable to working toward attaining that goal.
Thank *you* for stopping by. =-)
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Thank you for all of the replies so far. I really like the idea to itemize the grocery receipts so as to capture non-food items that get placed into the grocery category. I am going to try this and see what I discover.
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Thank you for all of the replies so far. I really like the idea to itemize the grocery receipts so as to capture non-food items that get placed into the grocery category. I am going to try this and see what I discover.
I am going to look over our receipts more carefully too. I was cleaning out the grocery bags and found a couple of receipts from last month. Did we really spend $25 on bacon?!?
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How do you do that?
Basically, being vegan and making everything from scratch from base ingredients - no convenience items ever. We also go to several stores(six) to get the best prices on everything. And we have a HUGE repertoire of recipes to work from - dozens of cookbooks, several blogs and websites, and piles of our own creations. Otherwise, we're horrible disorganized - according to Mint we average around 30 grocery transactions a month, meaning we go pretty much every day. We also don't meal plan or coupon or any of the usual stuff, on account of it being work and us being lazy. It would probably be a fair bit lower if we did that stuff.
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$270 for 2 adults, and we almost always come in under. That includes cleaning supplies, toilet paper, personal hygiene, etc.
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Usually between $250-300 for two adults, though we also allocate about $100 to eating out each month, so $350-400 for food per month. DH works in residential treatment so if he's there during meal time, he eats there, and I usually eat dinner with my parents at their house or just have quick lunch-like dinners when he's at work 2-3 nights per week. We only usually plan for two dinners together each week, and lunch is leftovers or sandwiches/salads.
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We don't eat out much (maybe $25/mo) and spend on average $160/week for 2 adults, 2 kids and a dog. We pack lunches and I cook all meals. I could get this down if I were willing to not buy organic produce and grass fed beef. But I tried that and the trade off wasn't worth it. I'd rather go without cable, which we cut.
Mine includes household and paper products.
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Ours is $800 - $900 month for 2 adults and 2 kids. I buy everything at the grocery store including light bulbs, prevacid, toilet paper, etc. So that is included in there. Our actual food costs are probably more like $600 month but that is just a guess.
My husband is a bottomless pit. He is a tall, lean, 52 year old eating machine. He probably consumes 4000 - 5000 calories/day. Anyone else dealing with a bottomless pit? Anyone who spends anytime with my husband will tell you, it's not natural for a person to eat as much as he does! LOL! I used to joke that feeding him was like feeding a teenage boy. Then we had two teenage boys stay with us for a week and I realized that I was wrong...he out ate both of them combined!
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Between $300 and $400 for both myself and my wife. We were around $280 last month until you include our spendy pizza and alcohol day which put us up to $299.
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My husband is a bottomless pit. He is a tall, lean, 52 year old eating machine. He probably consumes 4000 - 5000 calories/day. Anyone else dealing with a bottomless pit? Anyone who spends anytime with my husband will tell you, it's not natural for a person to eat as much as he does! LOL! I used to joke that feeding him was like feeding a teenage boy. Then we had two teenage boys stay with us for a week and I realized that I was wrong...he out ate both of them combined!
Yes, this is me! I have a ridiculously high metabolism and need to eat 3500+ calories a day (often more depending on my activity level) or I will lose weight. This has made keeping the grocery bill under control a challenge. We average about $430/month for two adults, including paper products, personal hygiene, and some other misc non-food. I have been working towards optimizing my food choices to favor healthy calorie dense goods. This can be difficult if your partner isn't blessed with the same weight shedding ability. The balance we have found is that I just eat more and supplement with additional calories (e.g. add a couple avocados to a side salad). We are starting to bring down the average, mostly through buying bulk. I think overall though I am fine with just having to buy more food than most.
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We used to spend SO much money on food every month. I'm ashamed to say it, but in the thousands per month. Even when we were "poor" college kids.
We are doing much better now. Less than $500 per month. Could be doing better though.
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How do you do that?
Basically, being vegan and making everything from scratch from base ingredients - no convenience items ever. We also go to several stores(six) to get the best prices on everything. And we have a HUGE repertoire of recipes to work from - dozens of cookbooks, several blogs and websites, and piles of our own creations. Otherwise, we're horrible disorganized - according to Mint we average around 30 grocery transactions a month, meaning we go pretty much every day. We also don't meal plan or coupon or any of the usual stuff, on account of it being work and us being lazy. It would probably be a fair bit lower if we did that stuff.
I do the same thing, but my grocery bill is higher. Oh, except I don't use coupons. I never see coupons available for basics like fruit, veggies, and meat.
We do not eat meat often, and we cook from scratch every day.
Maybe it's just more expensive here in DC.
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It's high, we are in a high COL area. We average about $800 per month for a family of four, but it is not unusual to hit $1000 from time to time. This includes all food and household supplies. I know, crazy. However, our eating out budget is about $50 per month, so we are eating mostly all meals at home for this cost.
I pack all lunches for my two school age kids, my husband makes and takes his lunch every day to work. When I was willing to drive to 5 or 6 different stores, our bill was a bit lower (around $600), but the quality of the food was lower. We have decided the quality/source of food is important to us. My husband eats paleo, I am GF, and my kids eat a balanced, healthy diet. We do not rely on cheap grains for the bulk of our meals. Mostly organic veggies, fruits, pastured and organic dairy, hormone-free meat, grass fed beef, as local as possible.
I shop at Costco and the locally owned Co-op, an alternative to Whole Foods, but similarly high priced. We also have our own chickens for eggs, and a garden and fruit bushes which produce lots of salad greens, some veggies, blueberries and raspberries.
Honestly, I am in an ongoing battle with myself to bring these food costs down, but part of me wonders whether I should just relax and accept that it's worth it to us to have this beautiful food. We drive old cars, got rid of cable 8 years ago, have a cheap cell phone plan, and no debt besides our mortgage. Oh, and we still save about 50% of our income.
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About $480 for four hungry college kids (and lots of guests -- I love cooking for guests!), including lightbulbs, paper towels, and the rest. Costco is our friend.
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Maybe it's just more expensive here in DC.
I don't think so - groceries are apparently 30%+ more expensive in Canada, which is why Canadians tend to cross the border in droves to grocery shop if it's an option. There have actually been articles in the paper about Americans complaining about Vancouver people coming down and buying up all the milk, stuff like that.
I don't have a car so it's not an option, and I would be pretty leery anyways looking at the differences in what the two governments allow in their food in regards to hormones, pesticides, etc.
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for us it varies, but I would say around 600-800 per month on food, which is groceries plus eating out. Does not include most toiletries/household, which is average 50-100 a month. two adults and two growing kids
Im a good cook, and I cook every day. I also make many things from scratch, and I preserve food as well. We eat a lot of meat, and I do buy stuff like ice cream, chocolate, chips (generic aldi chips, but chips)
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We vary, ranging from $250 to $350 for two people, three cats, and two giant breed dogs.
Before I went back to work full time, we did much better because I cooked everything from scratch and grew about half our food; then we often spent more feeding the dogs than ourselves (their food runs $80 a month).
Now it's a lot more convenience food and very little scratch cooking (my definition of "scratch" does not include self-rising flour). But the income is so much higher we're still way ahead. I manage to keep our diet relatively healthy, though that's slid some, too.
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About $480 for four hungry college kids (and lots of guests -- I love cooking for guests!), including lightbulbs, paper towels, and the rest. Costco is our friend.
Given the number of people, that seems quite good.
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I was thinking more about my number and realized a few things:
1. It includes alcohol and we had a party for 10 people this past month. Party was worth it.
2. We had my family over twice--once for Mother's Day and once for birthdays. We celebrated two birthdays at once, which saved food, time, and money.
3. Whereas we used to spend around $500-something on average per month while ALSO spending $100-$200 eating out, we spent the $500-something while NOT eating out in May. How did that happen? I don't know exactly.
After this discussion, I decided I am going to break out alcohol and maybe non-food items.
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There's a pretty wide range here. Do people feel like they are getting good value for money with what they buy? Obviously their is a wide range depending on where you live and the diet you choose, but I guess I want to know if people look at their grocery budget and think their is a lot of fat to cut. I would say we are pretty efficient in what we buy to cook at home, but have room to cut down / become more efficient when we do eat out.
My wife and I average $130 a month for groceries and cleaning supplies, but this is in a country with low costs for great food (South Africa). We also score by being invited over to our parents houses for supper on average more than once a week. Beyond that we spend about $80 on restaurants and take out coffee (my weakness is a great traditional cappuccino).
I got given a stove-top Mocha Pot (espresso maker) by a very mustachian friend, and that has helped me cut down dramatically - I'm aiming to get the take out coffee to less than once a week.
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$520 last month, and I consider that a good month. We live in a HCOL area and eat well, so I use a lot of coupons and shop the sales cycles to enjoy lean meats, some organics, and fresh produce.
I believe I'm getting the best value for what I buy and the time I spend getting it. I'm sure I could eat chicken breasts at $1.99/lb each week if I went to a different grocery store each week, depending on who has them on sale, but I don't have the time to go to more than 1 store. Sometimes I go to the nearest grocery store twice a week, to hit up a good sale at the beginning of the week and then at the end (so I have the on-sale perishables the next week too).
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I use the USDA 'Thrify' guidelines.
http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/usdafoodcost-home.htm
When I lived in a lower cost of living area it was no problem. Here in the Nrtheast US I can stay under as long as I pay attention and make a list. I enjoy cooking so I make most stuff from scratch, but typically buy a few frozen things each month for those days when I'm just too tired. I find the thrifty guidelines force me to be conscientious, without going crazy nuts. I could cut more, but the mental sanity gained by cooking trumps less cost for me!
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We've been keeping better track and cutting down the fat, particularly when it comes to eating out. We eat mostly Western or South/SE Asian food at home, occasionally go out for a special Chinese meal.
Groceries: trying to keep it under $200/month for two adults (the Man eats like a horse, but has given up coffee & alcohol for a few months).
Eating out: $100-150/month, mostly social occasions (1x/week or two) with an occasional run to Subway or the bagel shop for streetside dining and people-watching. No more 'just going out for drinks' after work, we go to the parks for a free workout in the outdoor gyms instead.
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Orca, before I even knew this was your post, I thought, "that's just like us!!"
We are in a high COL area, too. Now that I am no longer working full-time, I am trying for reduce the grocery spending by going to more stores for the sales, etc, going back to ALDI for certain items, little to no convenience foods, and today I will be planting my garden!
I think it's hard to compare yourself to others because we all live in different regions. And I agree that cutting the food bill can be done but not at the expense of your health. It's definitely tricky.
Even the CSAs and farmers markets are expensive around here. People always mention them as a way to save, but $6 for a small bunch of spinach is not cheap! I did the CSA thing for two years, will not be doing it this year as I hope that my own garden will suffice, and I will fill in with produce from the local coop and the farmer's market at times.
It's high, we are in a high COL area. We average about $800 per month for a family of four, but it is not unusual to hit $1000 from time to time. This includes all food and household supplies. I know, crazy. However, our eating out budget is about $50 per month, so we are eating mostly all meals at home for this cost.
I pack all lunches for my two school age kids, my husband makes and takes his lunch every day to work. When I was willing to drive to 5 or 6 different stores, our bill was a bit lower (around $600), but the quality of the food was lower. We have decided the quality/source of food is important to us. My husband eats paleo, I am GF, and my kids eat a balanced, healthy diet. We do not rely on cheap grains for the bulk of our meals. Mostly organic veggies, fruits, pastured and organic dairy, hormone-free meat, grass fed beef, as local as possible.
I shop at Costco and the locally owned Co-op, an alternative to Whole Foods, but similarly high priced. We also have our own chickens for eggs, and a garden and fruit bushes which produce lots of salad greens, some veggies, blueberries and raspberries.
Honestly, I am in an ongoing battle with myself to bring these food costs down, but part of me wonders whether I should just relax and accept that it's worth it to us to have this beautiful food. We drive old cars, got rid of cable 8 years ago, have a cheap cell phone plan, and no debt besides our mortgage. Oh, and we still save about 50% of our income.
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What I lack in experience/knowledge about investing (I'm learning!) I make up for in grocery prowess. We spend about $80 a month for two people and a cat, and we live in Brooklyn so food prices are high, most of our couple friends have told us they spend about $250-$300/month (figure out those numbers if you want to pass out).
I don't buy any pre-made foods, and I make many condiments myself. That's where you're really losing money on groceries. You can make basically everything from fresh produce, bulk grains, bulk beans, bulk nuts. Meat is a treat for us. I make our almond milk, I make faux meats from scratch, tomato sauce from scratch, I freeze pesto, I freeze peppers, mushrooms, fresh cut corn, green beans, during the summer when prices are low and we eat them through winter. This way I am also not buying any commercial frozen food. I can tomatoes, beans, carrots, beets, pickles in the summer/fall. I make homemade gnocchi, sweet potato pasta, zucchini pasta, (so easy to do with a $25 spiralizer), pizza dough, sausages, dumplings, vegetable and meat stocks. For two dollars I can make about 12 cups of hummus- think about that versus commercial! Even the best sale in the world will NEVER get you close to the cost of most homemade foods.
Basically aside from produce the only items we buy commercially at a grocery store are: peanut butter, tahini, olive oil, ghee or butter, eggs, dried spices, molasses, bread, and cheese. The only real key to cutting down your grocery bill massively is to do as much as you can yourself, and avoid anything pre-packaged. People who wouldn't think twice about learning plumbing to fix a toilet scoff at the idea of making your own bbq sauce or pasta as being "crazy" or "too hard", but 3 cups of bbq sauce costs me about 20 cents to make, you can't even find that kind of deal at walmart. Oh, and the best side effect is that you won't want to go out to eat anymore, because your food will kick the ass of basically every restaurant anywhere.
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$300, just food, family of 5. I also spend an extra $30 for each birthday we celebrate so that's another $150 a year total. We eat Flexitarian and I make most everything from scratch. I buy loss leaders and fill the pantry and freezer only once or twice a month. I have hubby stop on the way home from work to get any fresh produce we may need. I keep things pretty simple. We aren't "foodies". We don't live to eat around here. What we do eat I want to be low sugar, low processed and whole grain. And I hate wasted food so I really limit how much "new" stuff we try. My basic plan is to make two more expensive, meat centric meals per week, on Wednesdays and Sundays, and fill in the rest of the week with basic fare centered around veggies and bread, with any meat as an accent and not a star player. Tonight's dinner is chili spiced black bean burritos. Tomorrow I'm making Chick-fil-a nuggets with mac and cheese, broccoli and rolls as well as a lemon meringue pie. The next night is leftovers. Friday night is always homemade pizza night. Lunch is leftovers, homemade soup if I've made a big pot that week, eggs, salad, fish, hot dogs, sale chicken nuggets, homemade pizza I've frozen, pbj's and smoothies. Breakfast is homemade quickbreads/muffins/pancakes/waffles, eggs, yogurt with fruit and granola, cottage cheese, smoothies, oatmeal, grits or toast. Snacks are air popped corn, fruit, yogurt and cottage cheese, baked goods and good ole pbj. My girls enjoyed a morning snack today of leftover corn on the cob, cold. Drinks are water, green iced tea, milk and almond milk. In the winter we eat more soup at dinners. In the summer we eat more salad. We're not one of those families who never buys" treats". We have half a dozen bags of pretzels and chips in the pantry right now. We break them out on the weekends and have a serving or two each then forget about them the rest of the week. Same thing with alcohol. I was raised in a house that always had ice cream in the house and, on the advice of a pediatrician years ago, allow my skinny kids to have a serving of ice cream everyday if they want. We are perfectly healthy and happy with this arrangement. I feel good about what I am teaching the kids about nutrition and frugality as well as being content with a less decadent than average diet.